The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7243 p475
5 April 2003

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Letters to the Editor

Community Group

We were wrong to set up the Community Pharmacists Group

From Mr D. L. Coleman, FRPharmS

Your editorial, "Interest waning" (PJ, 22 March, p386), is timely. An organisation where insufficient people stand for a position leading to cancelled elections is undemocratic and unrepresentative; moreover, it lacks credibility and thus effectiveness. You mention that there are nearly 9,000 members of the Community Pharmacists Group, but I doubt whether many pharmacists know if they are or not. If one wished to stand as a candidate I imagine it would be difficult to find proposers who knew that they were members.

As a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council at the time of the setting up of the group, I remember endless debates about it, to such an extent that most other (arguably much more important) business was in danger of being neglected. Those of us who raised queries about cost-effectiveness, about staff time or about remit were regarded as reactionary, not "modern" in outlook and I fear that in the end we succumbed to a heavy campaign to set up the group. Having set it up those of us on the first committee were determined to make it successful but from the start it was clear that finding a role for the group which did not duplicate that of existing organisations and which would appeal to a large number of members was extremely difficult. A good newsletter was produced but again it was duplicating other work and did not make the impact on community pharmacists that was hoped.

Two or three years ago an independent inquiry into the group recommended in effect that it should be wound up; that recommendation was not accepted. I am afraid the time now has come to admit that we were wrong to set up the group and that the time has come to set about the process of closing it down.

Ironically at this stage when the Council appears to be placing heavier interest on its regulatory role, the need for an organisation that represents pharmacists and protects their interests is perhaps greater than ever. The large numbers of locum pharmacists shown by the recent manpower survey to work in the community sector have little effective representation or means to express their views. Industrial pharmacists and retired pharmacists might feel the same. It may be that the Community Pharmacists Group will cease but that a separate British Pharmacists Association will rise. I remain to be convinced whether that is progress or not.

David Coleman
North Walsham, Norfolk

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